Blaise

“If we attempt to examine the mirror in itself, we uncover, finally, nothing but the things upon it. If we want to seize hold of the things, we come up, in the end, with nothing but the mirror.— This is, in the most general terms, the history of knowledge.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality

“They encounter a sick man or an old man or a corpse, and immediately they say, 'Life is refuted.' But only they themselves are refuted, and their eyes, which see only this one face of existence.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“Whenever Northumberland appears Shakespeare allows him a noble, knightly demeanour and gives him language appropriate to it – indeed, he sometimes has very beautiful and even sublime passages to speak, since Shakespeare's practice is very far removed from that of Schiller, who likes to paint the Devil black and whose moral approval or disapproval of the characters he is drawing is audible in the words they themselves speak. In the case of Shakespeare, as also in that of Goethe, every character is, while he stands and speaks, entirely in the right, though he be the Devil himself.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

“Courage, however, is the best slayer—courage which attacks: which slays even death itself, for it says, 'Was that life? Well then! Once more!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra